


A Quieter Life

by keyboardclicks



Category: Raffles - E. W. Hornung
Genre: Character Death Fix, Established Relationship, Fix-It, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Period Typical Ableism, Post-Canon, rated t just to be safe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 06:18:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5732545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keyboardclicks/pseuds/keyboardclicks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We shall never again be as we once were, though I suppose that is the nature of life.  We shall never again run across rooftops, or slide through half-opened windows, or falsely help in manhunts when our pockets are stuffed full of those jewels which were stolen.  Truly, our lives have changed, but we are together, and so I am content."<br/>Post knees of the gods, Raffles has survived but with injuries that leave him mute and without much use of his legs.  Despite having a bad leg himself, Bunny insists on taking care of him.  Sometimes things are good, other times they aren't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Quieter Life

     In all the years I had known A.J. Raffles he seemed to maintain a sort of ethereal state, by which I mean that no matter what unfortunate circumstance he should have found himself in, he almost always came out on top, and would dance onto his next adventure with a merry grin and laugh and me trailing a few feet behind. In the instances when my friend was injured, caught, or otherwise inconvenienced for one reason or another, he could almost always brush the effect off and continue with his life, and were I to be with him when this inconvenience occurred my theory seemed to hold doubly true as the unfortunate circumstances most always gravitated towards me, likely because I expected them whilst Raffles maintained that everything would work as he planned it.  
     That final day in combat is the one situation I can think of in which Raffles made it out worse for wear than I.  
     The bullet was a straight shot through his neck, a shot which the doctors would later tell me pierced my friend’s larynx and grazed his spine, though I thank all of his gods and mine that his most important arteries were somehow missed. I at first thought he was merely concentrating and so was broken from his speech, however the sound of a violent and awful choking warned me of the troubles we were about to face.  
     Raffles clutched at his neck, blood spilling out and coloring his fingers red as his face began to whiten. I watched him fall behind our cover and drop his rifle, looking at me with wide and terrible eyes. Suddenly I forgot my pain and my numbness, sitting up against the rock and reaching out to try and help him. How I planned to do that I don’t know, but he seemed comforted by my touch at least a small bit.  
     Blood began to stain my fingers. Raffles coughed up nearly as much as he bled out. Color drained so drastically from his face that I thought he might become as clear to me as a ghost, then perhaps fade away entirely. But somehow, I suspect by the sheer willpower of my friend’s immense stubbornness, he remained conscious until the fire ended and our men came around to collect both bodies and survivors, the latter of which Raffles and I were two of very few.  
He collapsed into unconsciousness only moments before we were found, his head resting on my shoulder as he struggled for each breath and I did not know whether to keep his blood within him or help it to leave so that he might have a chance to properly breathe.  
     “You there!” called a man. He was familiar to me, but I fear I cannot recall his name. Seeing my head turn towards his voice, his eyes widened and he ran to us rather than walked. “Are you both alive?!”  
     I remember my own feeling of desperation, how powerless I felt with my lame leg and my friend dying on my shoulder. I nearly cried, “Yes! Please, help! He’s unconscious- shot in the throat and I should think nearly dead!”  
     “And you?”  
     “My leg is wounded- please, take him first! He needs cared for as quickly as possible!” My leg was more than wounded, of course, still bleeding and cursedly painful when the numbness would fade, but I cared for it so much less than I cared for Raffles. If my leg had to rot for his life to be spared, then an invalid I would happily be.  
     The man called over two others and carefully they loaded my friend onto a stretcher and quickly took him to the nearest medical tent. To feel his weight lifted from me was a terrible thing, for in my heart and mind I knew that it may have been the last time I would ever feel any part of him. Raffles was many things and stubborn was one of them, but he was not and would never be invulnerable. He had cheated death more times than I care to count and I feared that his luck may have run out that day, and that I may be left all alone in such an unfamiliar place.  
     “Can you walk?” the familiar but nameless officer asked, extending to me his hand which I gratefully took.  
     “Perhaps… but not with this leg.”  
     “Here, lean on me and I’ll help you back- there we are.” He patted my shoulder, and the numbness was once again spreading to my waist, but I kept on walking with him. “What a horrid round… you’re lucky to have survived.”  
     “It’s only because of him,” I insisted, watching as Raffles and those carrying him disappeared into the medical tent and we approached it slowly, “he took me behind that rock... I would be dead otherwise, I just know it…”  
     “A good man, then… I pray he can be saved.”  
     And I, who had long since accepted my fate to the devil, prayed with every bit of faith I still possessed. I prayed to every god I had ever learned the name of and some that I am almost sure I made up. Goddesses, too, and kings and queens and all other manner of holy men and women that my frantic mind could conjure.  
     “Please,” I silently begged as the nurses cleaned and dressed my wound and the doctors scrambled with Raffles in the tent’s corner. “I will gladly damn myself if only he can be saved.” I know what I said was foolish, and yet I do not regret a word of it. A. J. Raffles, for all he had put me through and for all he had done, was a good man and      I shall never not believe that, for he helped me when I should have been ruined, and saved me more times after that. I had lived through his absence and never again did I wish to, for even should I be a free man, without him by my side I knew not what I would do.  
     It was on the knees of the gods if he would survive, and for some reason I know not, they were merciful.  
     Against my best attempts I collapsed from exhaustion once my leg was bandaged and I was too tired even to dream, though I suspect that if I had there would have been nothing but terrible nightmares. When I woke again the tent was quite silent, not at all how it had been when doctors were busying themselves saving my friend’s life. For a moment I panicked, for I knew not how long I had slept, and feared that he was gone forever. When my eyes adjusted to the darkness, though, I noticed a figure sleeping in the bed beside me which had not been there before. I saw a long and lean body, a throat covered in bandages, and a mess of curly, copper hair that was white at the roots. I saw Raffles’ chest rise and fall weakly, and heard the raspy air from his mouth. I saw and I heard these things and I began to cry, for Raffles, my Raffles, was once again alive and beside me.  
     And then I again fell asleep, exhaustion and relief waving over me in equal measures as I had never known them before and I have never known since. When I woke again there was sunlight in the tent and doctors between my bed and Raffles so when I tried to sit up one of them helped me very kindly to do so. The pain in my leg was a dull but throbbing ache, but at least my leg was there to be in pain at all.  
     “How do you feel?” he asked me.  
     “Well, I’ve most certainly been better,” I replied, giving him a grim smile but trying to appear lighthearted.  
     The doctor smiled in return, nodding understandingly. He then explained to me my situation, and how I would likely require a walking cane once I was able to get up from bed. That was fine, I explained, as just hours ago I had been sure that I would have no leg at all. Other than that, he said, I was going to be alright. Naturally I then inquired about Raffles.  
     “Your friend is lucky to be alive,” he answered plainly. “But he is alive, and I suppose that is what matters.”  
     “So he will live?” I could hardly believe it. I perhaps thought my last glimpse of him had been a fever dream. To hear those words from a doctor only solidified my feelings of relief.  
     “As far as I can tell… yes. Though, of course, he will need to rest and recover here for the time being. He lost an unhealthy level of blood and his throat is still healing, but we’ll see how it goes from here on. He’s in rather high spirits for a man who nearly died, but I suppose he’s simply happy to have made it away with his life much like you are to have made it away with your leg.”  
     I chuckled a bit, surely out of my new sense of comforted joy more than actual humor. “Yes, he tends to- wait is he awake? Can I see him?”  
     “Oh, yes, woke up about an hour ago.” He then shooed away the nurses who were crowding his bedside and I was able to finally catch a glance of my friend, still lying on his back with his head resting comfortably on a pillow and his neck covered in white gause. He glanced over at me, then down at the dressings on my leg, then back up to my face… and the damn man smiled at me. Smiled in that insufferable way of his that I loved and that made me feel as if the world really would be alright, me with my useless leg and he with a hole in his neck. Yes, the devil smiled at me, and what could I do but smile in return?


End file.
